Reagan's Treason: October Surprise and the $23 Million Payoff (Greg PALAST)

[Kid Berwyn]

Reagan’s Treason: October Surprise and the $23 Million Payoff

by Greg Palast
20, 2023

Excerpt…

In Austin, Texas, I received unshakeable evidence that Barnes was the fixer who got Congressman Bush’s son out of the Vietnam draft. (This, while Bush Sr. was voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam.)

What did Barnes get for his burial of Reagan’s deal with Iran and Bush Jr.’s draft dodging?

In 1999, I was investigating a company, GTech, which ran both the British and Texas lotteries. Texas had disqualified GTech from operating the state lottery based on strong evidence of corruption. But oddly, the new Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, fired the lottery director who banned GTEch. Then Bush’s new lottery commissioner gave GTech back its multi-billion-dollar contract, no bidding.

Notably, Bush’s firing of the state’s lottery director came two days after a meeting with GTech’s lobbyist—Ben Barnes.

Barnes’ fees from GTech? $23 million.

Continues…

https://www.gregpalast.com/reagans-treason-october-surprise/

Follow the money, they said…

[7wo7rees]

1. Hi Kid. It is all fascinating and heart wrenching having lived in Texas through it all.

Palast is one of my very favorites.

Hard to believe that it's been 20+ years since his book "The Best Democracy ..."

(Just for fun, I was at a Earth/Green event in Austin in September of 2003. The man I worked for was speaking and we had a booth promoting his business. Amy Goodman was there, Greg Palast was there. We were all staying in Austin's 1st boutique, eco-friendly, green hotel. Shortly after we had checked in, lo and behold, here came Greg, he was in the room directly beneath ours (only 2 stories in a park like setting). I said hello to him. Next morning for breakfast, what a treat!! The room was full of activists having breakfast before leaving for convention center. If you were not there, you would have loved to be.)

Ms7wo7rees

Question, Does Barnes just get to walk away now with this before I die honesty? He can't be prosecuted now for treason, or, he was just innocent observer?

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Barnes said he wanted Jimmy Carter to know he was shafted.

A Four-Decade Secret: One Man's Untold Story of Sabotaging Carter's Re-election

by Peter Baker
The New York Times, March 18, 2023

WASHINGTON — It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html

https://archive.is/FgABN

Thanks to the great DUer Tony_FLADEM for the heads-up…

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17738745

[Ninga]

2. I read Palast's article at the link you posted. Did you read it? He really slams Dan Rather. My

reading of Rather’s account is very different.

[7wo7rees]

3. Palast slams Rather for what happened to the Col. he exposed and the fallout.

It was criminal. It also cost Rather significantly.

[Kid Berwyn]

5. Read every word.

Palast also praises Robert Perry. I agree with that, too.

[Ninga]

6. I understand. Rather really used poor judgement, or worse then that, no judgement. It's a

shame.

[Kid Berwyn]

7. 22 November 1963

My Friend, my problem with him goes back to Dealey Plaza.

Dan Rather Blinked

by Penn Jones, Jr
Continuing Inquiry

The greatest criminal in this nation, we think, is a dishonest newsman. Newsmen have been given the highest gift a nation can give a group: a right. Newsmen have been given this right of freedom of the press and freedom of speech in the expectation they would report the truth as honestly as humanly possible. Ordinary criminals kill individuals, but dishonest newsmen are involved in killing a nation--in this case, this democracy. Which brings us to native Texan Dan Rather, a longtime Houstonian, and his new book, The Camera Never Blinks.

SNIP...

But the biggest distortion is what he said he saw when he was one of the few persons in the world privileged to see the Abraham Zapruder film that Saturday morning, November 23. In his narration of the film as part of CBS nationwide television coverage, Rather said the President's head "went forward with considerable violence." This narration confirmed the so-called "Oswald position" for the nation, but he said nothing about the violent backward motion of the President's head which would have strongly suggested a second gunman at that early date. Rather does take care to tell us again that he took no notes.

SNIP...

His book says this about the incident: "At the risk of sounding too defensive, I challenge anyone to watch for the first time a twenty-two second film of devastating impact, run several blocks, then describe what they had seen in its entirety, without notes. Perhaps someone can do it better than I did that day. I only know that I did it as well and as honestly as I could under the conditions.

"But here is where the case gets tricky. Years later, a group of assassination buffs took an audio tape of my description of what I saw in the office of Zapruder's lawyer and laid it over the film as a narration. So the impression was given that Dan Rather was part of a conspiracy. Either that or he was a Communist dupe, or something, how else could he have seen the film, etc. etc."

CONTINUED...

SOURCE (bad link now): http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/05th_Issue/rather.html

Way Bac archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20131107101712/https://acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/05th_Issue/rather.html

Here’s what Dan said he saw from the Zapruder film.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/dan-rather-describes-the-zapruder-film/#x

Pretty much totally at odds with what the film shows.